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Fuelling Gender Equality in the Canadian Auto Workers Union

The ILO Bureau for Gender Equality has included the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) into its recent compilation of 25 good practices entitled "Gender Equality and Decent Work, Good Practices at the Workplace" ( Note 1). The CAW, Canada's largest private-sector union with about 260,000 members, has a long-standing reputation in promoting gender equality, advocating for women workers' rights and fostering women's activism.

Article |
11 July 2005

OSHAWA, Canada (ILO online) -
When auto making giant General Motors (GM) closed
its Cutting & Sewing Department here in 1968,
hundreds of women workers lost their jobs - even
though some had more seniority than their male
counterparts.

In those days, the Collective Agreement at
the GM plant here called for separate and
non-interchangeable seniority lists for male and
female employees. Different seniority lists meant
that women with more years of seniority than their
male counterparts could not compete for positions
on equal footing with men.

That meant women with more seniority
couldn't transfer to areas of the plant to take
more conventional "men's jobs". Faced
with massive job losses, the Women's Committee
of CAW Local 222 decided to fight for the jobs and
seniority of female workers at GM and propose
changes to the law (
Note 2).

That move set history in motion. In 1970, a
group of women in the CAW set in motion a bill that
successfully amended the law in the Canadian
province of Ontario to prohibit discrimination on
the basis of sex.

Not only did the 222 Women's Committee
manage to improve Canadian law, they set an example
as to how CAW women could mobilize and fight for
gender equality. Fourteen years later, the CAW was
the first Canadian union to negotiate an
employer-financed childcare fund.

Buzz Hargrove, President of the CAW said,
"The involvement and activism of so many women
in our union has made our union better and
stronger".

From past to present

The CAW's Women's Department has
been fuelling gender equality in the male-dominated
union with female membership of just over 34 per
cent. "Working closely with departments,
staff, and the top leadership of the union ensures
that CAW Women's Department programs and
policies are widely supported and therefore
implemented", says Julie White, the CAW's
Director of Women's Programs.

The Department's equality strategy
combines both gender mainstreaming initiatives and
affirmative measures for women. The CAW has been
fighting sexism by negotiating anti-discrimination
measures, including employment equity and pay
equity plans, and strong anti-harassment language
giving workers the to right to refuse work when
facing harassment.

The union has also been bargaining for
Women's Advocates positions since 1993 with
major companies in Canada. The women holding these
positions are trained as peer advocates with paid
time off. Other women in the company can approach
them confidentially to obtain information on issues
such as sexual harassment and domestic violence.
Each year, the CAW donates over $100,000 CAD to
women's shelters across the country and
advocates for affordable housing for women facing
violence.

In terms of gender mainstreaming, the
strategy involves initiatives that integrate
equality issues into union policy, activities and
structures. With the adoption of union policy on
diversity and equality in 2003, the CAW continues
to build on its 1991 Affirmative Action paper with
a number of progressive concrete equality
initiatives such as gender-balanced representation,
gender-related research, and gender-sensitive
collective agreements.

For the CAW, achieving a gender-balanced
representation means that its staff, leadership and
programs should reflect the gender composition of
the union membership. Gender-related research
allows the collection and use of data disaggregated
by sex, and helps the CAW assess its progress
towards gender equality.

In 2003, the CAW conducted its first
gender-disaggregated survey on union membership and
leadership. The study highlighted the need to
increase the participation of women in CAW
leadership: while over 50 per cent of all recording
secretaries, and nearly 35 per cent of all
financial secretaries were women, they comprised
just over 20 per cent of all local presidents and
vice-presidents.

The CAW's Women's Department replies
to the challenge with affirmative measures. This
involves creating space within the union
exclusively reserved for women to foster their
activism and develop female leadership. These
include two seats on the National Executive Board
and one seat on the bargaining committee of all
local unions with at least 30 per cent female
membership.

Union education programs such as the Women
Activists and Women's Leadership Programs, the
CAW Council Women's Committee, an annual
Women's Conference and CAW Women's
Committees and Networks, which organize around
common equality issues and fight for change, round
up the strategy.

"Equality, democracy and solidarity are
inseparable - erode one and the others become
meaningless, says Peggy Nash, former Director of
the CAW Women's Programs. She is currently
senior assistant to CAW President and co-chair of
the Canadian Labour Congress Women's Committee.

The challenges ahead

Despite the CAW's relentless fight for
gender equality and women workers' rights,
ongoing challenges remain. When asked about the
main obstacles hindering union work in terms of
gender equality issues, Julie White points to the
recent "mergers [between the CAW and other
unions] and working with new members to negotiate
CAW women's bargaining agenda in collective
agreements".

Due to the expansion of Canada's service
sector, Canadian unions are gradually focusing
their organizing efforts away from the
manufacturing sector to the growing service
industry. In the case of the CAW, organizing
efforts since the 1990s have gradually shifted away
from the auto industry, and increasingly organized
workers in the services, since jobs in this sector
tend to be some of the lowest paid, insecure and
without benefits.

Given the large concentration of female
workers in the services, the rank and file of the
CAW has experienced an increase in the number of
female part-time service-sector workers. An
increasing female membership however, has not
translated into equal and equitable access to union
benefits and services. Due to the precariousness of
service-sector jobs, new CAW members often end up
negotiating higher wages only, instead of
additional union benefits such as employers'
contributions towards paid education leave.

"Despite the challenges ahead, the CAW
still continues to be a leading voice in terms of
fuelling gender equality and activism in the world
of work and that's why we have included it in
our compilation of good practices at the
workplace", says Evy Messell, Technical
Cooperation Coordinator in the ILO Bureau for
Gender Equality.

The ILO Bureau for Gender Equality hopes
that the examples of good practice at CAW and 24
other ILO members, including governments,
employers' and workers' organizations, will
enable practitioners to learn from the successful
experiences of others and to apply them to their
own work.

"The compilation documents good
practice on how the CAW, along with other ILO
constituents, take positive action to advance
gender equality in the world of work in line with
the ILO shared policy objective on gender equality.
This means that trade union work promoting the ILO
Conventions on gender equality is important. Right
now, Canada has ratified two of the four key
equality ILO Conventions (No. 100 & No.
111)", says Evy Messell.